"It's hard to fit into an industry that doesn't necessarily want to give you a seat at the table": Why the Alisha Boe era is just beginning

It is a sunny winter afternoon in Los Angeles and Alisha Boe is embracing the distinctly Californian contradictions: dressing warmly whilst sipping an iced matcha drink. She wears a cozy grey cardigan, relaxed grey slacks and white sneakers; a quilted black Chanel purse is slung over her chair. The matcha is a brand new development – Boe quit drinking coffee this week after being diagnosed with acid reflux.

Boe was born in Oslo, but moved with her mother to LA when she was seven. “I became a valley girl,” she says, with a smile. She has been acting since she was a child, finding success on the hit Netflix show 13 Reasons Why. Her mother is from Trondheim, Norway and her father is Somalian. The biggest difference between Norway and California was the temperature, she says, noting that today it’s 23°C and also ostensibly winter.

Related: The biggest Nordic releases coming to Netflix this year

Her body reacted immediately to the shift in temperatures and location. “When I first moved here, I had like six heat strokes in one summer,” she says. “I was getting these bumps on my body and my face because my body literally wasn't used to this warm weather. I got hives. I would throw up and pass out. If my stepdad would play basketball and I was just sitting there, not even doing anything, I’d just pass out from a heat stroke. It took my body six months to acclimate to the high temperature weather.”

She says the culture shock also came from things like “not having the freedom to walk to the 7-Eleven down the street” after roaming Oslo with her friends. Boe spoke only Norwegian when she arrived in America and as she learned English she felt pressure to lose her foreign accent. “It is doubly strange, like culturally. Being this Norwegian girl, and then becoming very Americanised but not sharing any heritage or blood with America? Identity-wise, it ’s really confusing growing up and I’m still figuring it out, but I'm very proud of being Somalian and Norwegian,” she says.

Related: The 10 most Instagrammable places in Norway (that aren’t in Oslo)

It’s been a process of self-acceptance. When she first moved, she tried to fit in. “I definitely wanted to get rid of my accent, so much so that I completely forgot my first language. When you're a kid, anything that makes you different makes you get picked on. And I just wanted to blend in as much as possible, but in retrospect, it’s pretty unfortunate,” says Boe. She has recently started learning Norwegian again and her first language is slowly returning. “I definitely understand a lot and I'm relearning. I mean, it's my first language so it's ingrained into my brain. I just have to tap into it again. I’ve been taking online classes and all of that, so it's going to come back.”

She goes back to Norway for Christmas, where she says she can enjoy the beauty of Norwegian winter. When she was a child, she recalls being bothered by spending 30 minutes getting dressed for the cold, in the dark, every morning. She would walk to school in the snow, hoping her eyelashes wouldn’t freeze. “Now I go back and I’m like, ‘This is so cosy and I love it!’ It's funny.”

Boe always loved performing. In Oslo she did ballet recitals and after-school theatre programs where she “played a tree or a rock.” She talks about performing in an annual children’s pageant retelling Old Norse mythology: “It’s just Thor on stage, retold by a bunch of elementary school kids.” Her family was “very very supportive” of her interests. When she moved to LA she started auditioning professionally and booked some commercials for Bratz dolls. She guested on sitcoms, soap operas, and shows like NCIS and CSI: Cyber. At 18 she booked the role of Jessica Davis in 13 Reasons Why, which became a breakout hit for Netflix.

The UK show Skins is one of her favourites, so she loved doing a moody teen show like 13 Reasons Why. During production of the show’s four seasons, she lived in Berkeley, in Northern California. She loved living in the Bay Area, which she describes as “a mix between really rich hippies and then just really cool people.” Being able to walk around in Berkeley reminded her of Oslo.

Boe moved apartments recently, after her place in LA’s hip Silver Lake district developed black mould while she was away for work. “I was away filming in Atlanta, came back and there was just black mould all over my floors. I had to move because my lungs were obviously going to collapse if I stayed any longer,” she says. She moved to a place in bohemian Laurel Canyon where she faced another natural hazard when she found a scorpion in her new apartment. “I didn't even know scorpions were in LA,” she laughs.

Her personal taste skews towards independent film. She loves director Gregg Araki, who she first encountered when she watched Mysterious Skin while working her way through actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s filmography. “I just went down the rabbit hole like wow, Gregg Araki is so cool. I actually got to work with him, which was insane,” she says. “He directed me for a couple of episodes of 13 Reasons Why, which was so crazy. It was amazing. He’s one of my idols. I was very starstruck. He’s just so unique in his vision.”

Boe wrote a screenplay based on The Cheetah Girls when she was a kid, but says she hasn’t started writing her own material again just yet – although a dearth of opportunities for black actresses may push her to do so. For now, she is just looking to collaborate with like-minded creatives who want to tell interesting, complex stories. “As a woman of colour in this industry, we really don't get as many opportunities as our white peers,” she says, matter-of-factly, “So a lot of my peers are writing their own stuff.”

She notes that racism and colourism are still enormous issues in the entertainment industry. “As a black woman, I would love to see more diversity on screen for everybody of colour and not just, you know, me. I even benefit from colourism in this industry because they tend to hire light-skinned women rather than darker-skinned black women, and it's not fair at all.” She expands on this train of thought, which is clearly very important to her. “And not just black people. But Hispanics and Asians and everyone else should get to playfully rounded characters that aren't just based on race.”

She adds that racism and colourism are issues that go far beyond the entertainment industry, but she’s trying to just do great work from within it for now. “I'm really lucky to be in this industry in this day and age because people are really creating diversity.” Boe says she’s “fighting for change, proving myself and building myself up. But yeah, it is a bit tiresome. It's hard, I think, to fit into an industry that doesn't necessarily want to give you a seat at the table.” She grew up around more diversity in Oslo, she says, than LA. “There are a lot of immigrants in Norway. I have a photo of me from my elementary school and there's only one white girl in it. And then I moved to America the same year, and I was the only black person in the sea of whites.”

Related: The truth about diversity in the Nordics

America also has a very different history of racism. “I find Norwegians are really progressive. I experienced way more racism in America because we're so rooted in racism historically, to the point where like if I'm in the south in Atlanta and I want to drive to Savannah I'm scared to get pulled over.” In America, the Somalian immigrant community is most concentrated in Minnesota, which also has a large presence of white Norwegian immigrants.

She tells a story about how once she was flying out of the airport in Atlanta and a stranger invited her to have dinner. “She looked at me and said ‘Are you from Somalia?’ I'm like, ‘Yes.’ And she literally gave me her number and said come to dinner Saturday, come meet my family. Somalis are very like, you know, if you're one of them they take you in with open arms and treat you as if you're family because we are all family.” She regrets that she wasn’t able to take the woman up on her offer of dinner because she was flying back to work, but it’s clear she was deeply touched.

On Instagram, Boe has 3.8 million followers. Among the glowing California selfies, she recently posted a narrative series of captioned photos, in which she stars opposite actor Noah Centineo. Captured by photographer Sarah Bahah, the series is meant to, “explore the complex and often torturous dynamic between an anxious partner and an avoidant one.” Boe resembles a French New Wave ingenue in the photos, emoting a wide variety of feelings entirely through facial expressions. She had a hard time with social media when 13 Reasons Why first blew up because fans conflated her with her character.

“At first it was really overwhelming,” she admits. “I took it personally at the time because I couldn't differentiate that they didn't really mean it towards me. I am the face of the character.” She feels more control over her online presence now. To relax, she unplugs and drinks wine. Her next project is Strangers, a high school-set reimagining of Strangers On A Train with Sophie Turner, Maya Hawke and Camila Mendes. After that will come When You Finish Saving The World, the directorial debut of actor Jesse Eisenberg. She feels on the verge of a different sort of breakout and is firmly in control of her career and her life.

When she thinks about Norway, Boe says, “I just think of my family and growing up and going camping and fishing with my grandpa.” And she loves to make Norwegian food. “Last meal, it's like either smoked salmon or salmon. I was vegan for a year and I couldn't do it because I love salmon. I'm lactose intolerant, but I'm such a fish person.”

Finding out Americans didn’t eat their sandwiches open-faced baffled her. “We just eat fish on toast, open-faced.” When she saw what Americans called a sandwich... “I’m like, ' Why are we putting this extra bread on top? That's like ruining the whole flavour profile',” She exclaims with passion. She also loves tubed caviar. There is one Norwegian aquatic delicacy she doesn’t enjoy, a holiday treat involving jellied fish. “For Christmas dinner, it's a tradition. It’s a jellied white salted fish and you bite into it. You just move the plate and it jiggles.”